Service or Sermon Ideas
- Interview a Christian who works in mainstream media
- Imagine a TV reality show about a non-Christian coming to live with your church community for a month. How do you think they'd fare?
- How would Jesus respond to the top five news items of this weekend's newspapers?
- What would Jesus say to each of the characters in ‘Desperate Housewives’? (or ‘House’, ‘Lie to Me’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’… take your pick.
- Conduct an Oprah style chat show (or Ellen/Dr Oz etc… on couches, etc) interviewing some non-Christians about how they feel about God/Jesus/church/Christianity.
- Do a CSI type story around the evidence for the resurrection? (Or Case for Christ)
- What would Jesus' website look like? What would it promote? What other sites would it link to?
- If you worked for a major NZ advertising firm, and you had a million dollar budget, how would you communicate the "Jesus message" as an advertising campaign?
- Which actors/musicians/TV personalities are the top three influencers of teenagers today? What are their messages?
- How might the Apostle Paul use the media if he was a TV/Radio/Film producer today? What lessons does he teach us about how communicating the gospel, that we could employ today?
- What music would be on Jesus' i-Pod?
- What would be on Jesus’ YouTube ‘favourites’ list.
- What DVDs would Jesus rent from the video shop?
- The Simpsons pray, attend church regularly and remain loyal to each other. How do they rate as a Christian family? (Consider using a clip from The Simpsons as a sermon illustration).
- “If it bleeds, it leads” – that’s the mantra of newsrooms. What is it about us that gravitates towards bad news, rather than good news?
- How does today’s media culture define ‘success’? How does that compare with a biblical view of success?
- If Jesus had been born today, would the media celebrate him, or crucify him? Why?
- Why are there so few Christians with high profile in NZ's secular media?
- Consider the biblical/spiritual themes contained within popular movies (such as Book of Eli, Avatar, Lord Of The Rings, The Matrix, Bruce Almighty, Les Misérables , WALL-E, Finding Nemo, etc) and talk about the spiritual lessons we can learn from them.
- How are Christians typically represented in the media?
- If Christians controlled the media, would they allow freedom of speech? And what would be other implications?
Food for thought
- If a TV network arrived at your church this morning to tape your service and broadcast it, would that be a good thing, or a bad thing?
- Jesus was familiar with the popular theatre of his time and employed illustrations from it to convey his message (hypocrites = actors). Should we likewise seek to broaden our understanding of the modern equivalent, the cinema and TV, in order to better reach the people of our culture? If so, how?
- Are the media consumption habits of Christians actually any different from those of non-Christians? Does our Christian worldview influence what we watch and won't watch? Should it?
Physical ideas / service structure ideas / things you could do differently…
- Everyone gets given today’s newspaper as they walk in the door.
- Hand out last month’s TV Guide… or Women’s Weekly… address some of the topics raised on the front cover.
- Rearrange the seating.
- Consider using video clips from movies or TV as a sermon illustration.
- Think of appropriate music to play, that reinforces the main point
*thanks to various contributors
If you have a further idea you'd like to add to the list, please email your idea to info@mediaprayerday.org.nz